Going for the Gold

OK, I like the chutzpah in this idea, but I’m not sure what to make of it.

Last week, a couple of dozen folks took part in the Second Annual 7th Street Pub Crawl. Didn’t know there was one last year, but whatever.

For $25 per person, participants received a commemorative t-shirt and some complimentary libations and grub at the organizers’ house nearby. The group, known as the Fort Worth Drinking Team (see: chutzpah), started at the Bronx Zoo, finished in the Bermuda Triangle of J&J’s Hideaway, The Torch, and The Wreck Room, and in between hit Shamrock Pub, Fred’s Texas Café, and the 7th Haven. (What? No Ten? No Black Dog Tavern? No Pop’s Safari Cigars and Fine Wine? No 6th Street Live?)

As I said, the crawl is cool for a few reasons, mainly for its healthy economic impact on the area. But there’s something weird about the whole deal. Maybe I’m thrown off by the competitive aspect implied by “team.” Loosely speaking, the word is defined by Merriam-Webster’s as a set of two or more people working toward a shared goal in a competitive context. Clearly, the shared goal here is getting fucked up, and, as in a marathon, the competition is the reflection in the mirror. (Each team member is essentially competing against his or her tolerance for alcohol.)

Things begin to get fuzzy when we start talking about what the team is trying to win. Let’s say it’s the unassailable right to proclaim, “My friends and I can drink our asses off – we have the commemorative t-shirts to prove it.” Great. More power to ya. But wait: There are a lot of people in town who can drink their asses off. I’ve seen some dudes shotgun several beers in a row. I’ve seen people go on monthly benders. (Modern Drunkard magazine defines a bender as three straight days of drinking, including a work day. Unless you call in sick, you haven’t been on an official bender.) Where are their commemorative t-shirts?

Simply put, just because some fun folks came up with the name the Fort Worth Drinking Team does not mean they’re the drinkingest denizens of 76107. To be the champs, you gotta out-perform another team, and if the professional drinkers of West Seventh (there’s a lot of ‘em) ever took a break from imbibing to form a club, the Fort Worth Drinking Team would be in trouble.

The potential for a drink-off scares me, though. While I’m all for competition, I don’t know if the non-team members mentioned above need any reason to drink more. I hate to say this, but every night out on West Seventh for them is kinda like a pub crawl to oblivion. A commemorative t-shirt wouldn’t do them any good; they all know where they were the night before. What they need is proof of what they did there, maybe a commemorative video that documents all of the buffoonery they committed for the love of America’s pastime – and I don’t mean baseball.